Summary

• Lenovo's laptops excel in consumer, business, and gaming categories, with the Yoga, ThinkPad, and Legion brands leading the way.
• The design of Lenovo's laptops is sometimes inspired by personal experiences, such as a shopping excursion in Japan.
• Lenovo experiments with designs, such as foldable and dual-screen laptops, to cater to changing work and leisure habits and to offer unique options for different customers.

Lenovo is undoubtedly making some of the best laptops you can buy right now, and its area of dominance encompasses consumer, business, and gaming PCs. The Yoga brand is arguably in its best shape ever with a smart range of budget, mid-range, and high-end hardware, ThinkPad maintains its legendary legacy in the professional world, and Legion gaming laptops are easy to recommend thanks to intelligent cooling, modern design, and robust performance.

Brian Leonard, Lenovo's Vice President of Design since 2017, is undoubtedly a key proponent of the success the company is currently enjoying. XDA Editor-in-Chief Rich Woods and I recently had a chance to ask Leonard some pertinent questions about recent design decisions, experimental products, and what we can expect to see from the company in the future.

Laptop design is sometimes more personal than we assume

A camping mug was inspiration for one of the best laptops of all time

When the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga launched in 2021, it made waves in the laptop world thanks to its incredibly thin and light convertible design with 13.5-inch display and boxy 3:2 aspect ratio. Weighing in at about 2.5 pounds (1.15kg) and measuring just 0.45 inches (11.5mm) thin, it was a versatile laptop made to accommodate those normally accustomed to using a tablet.

But it also caught the attention of regular laptop users looking for an unorthodox professional device. The magnetic active pen, optional 5G connectivity, haptic touchpad, and, of course, a chassis made from titanium, carbon fiber, and aluminum were all features that contributed to what is still Rich Woods's favorite laptop of all time.

Even three years later, it sounds like a successful recipe. But Lenovo only offered the X1 Titanium Yoga for one generation before removing it from their available stable.

"I can't remember exactly," said Leonard when asked why it was discontinued. "Sometimes we do things to test the market. I think we'll see something like that come back. The aspect ratio and the form factor weren't exactly where we started and what we wanted, but I felt really good about the product we released. Unfortunately, when you start looking at how well it did in the market, things sometimes have to go away."

Here's where things get particularly interesting. I was always under the assumption that design teams were beholden to market demand, with required changes forecasted years in advance as individual technologies improved. I knew that Lenovo tried out titanium in the early 2000s, and I wrongly assumed it had simply dusted the material off for another go in 2021. Turns out, laptop design is sometimes much more personal, to the point where a shopping trip can spur different thinking.

I'm in a camping shop, and I'm like, 'Wow, here's a beautiful cup made out of titanium. It's a third of the weight of my Yeti.' I absolutely loved it. — Brian Leonard, Lenovo VP of Design

On inspiration for the X1 Titanium Yoga, Leonard said, "Materials are super important to me. That came from me being in Japan, doing a little trend shopping. I'm in a camping shop, and I'm like, 'Wow, here's a beautiful cup made out of titanium. It's a third of the weight of my Yeti.' I absolutely loved it. That was the moment I said, 'I've got to figure out what we can do with this material.' It started the conversation with engineering. We ended up actually working with the company that made that cup to understand titanium and roll that in."

Leonard didn't rule out the possibility that titanium might make a return to Lenovo devices in the future. It just won't be a second-gen X1 Titanium Yoga. If I'm hazarding a guess, it will most likely return as a way to make foldable laptops thinner and more durable than what we've seen in the past.

ThinkPad is a great place to experiment

Look no further than the X1 Fold

Lenovo's X1 series of premium business laptops isn't going anywhere, at least according to Leonard. He uses a ThinkPad X1 Yoga (Gen 8) as his daily driver, and though this year's model has been rebranded as the ThinkPad X1 2-in-1, it will remain as one half (alongside the X1 Carbon) of the lineup's foundation.

This lasting power doesn't apply to all X1 models, as we've already seen with the Titanium Yoga. It was joined recently by the X1 Nano, which made it through three generations before being discontinued. But that doesn't mean we won't see more experimental laptops with a ThinkPad badge release in the future.

We were doing some proof-of-concept, and it just felt natural for people to have confidence in a screen that bends. ThinkPad was a great place to put that. — Brian Leonard, Lenovo VP of Design

You don't need to look any further than the ThinkPad X1 Fold, a futuristic laptop with single folding display that was re-released late last year with a larger 16-inch form factor. When asked why Lenovo's only marketed foldable is a ThinkPad — when builders like HP and Asus are releasing their foldables on the consumer side — Leonard again flattened our assumptions with his answer:

"When we first started the foldables, we started them inside the ThinkPad business. There's a lot of engineering capability because of the years and years of legacy inside ThinkPad and a really good relationship with engineering. We were doing some proof-of-concept, and it just felt natural for people to have confidence in a screen that bends. ThinkPad was a great place to put that."

"It's also an expensive technology. Folding screens aren't the cheapest thing out there. So we felt that it fit well into some of those usage models of insurance adjusters and some people in the field that may need a little more flexibility in how they work versus sitting in a cubicle all day."

The original 13.3-inch X1 Fold was the only ThinkPad laptop to include a keyboard without TrackPoint system (the red nub and extra mouse buttons along the top of the touchpad), but that has been remedied on the 16-inch re-release. The separate keyboard is better than ever, but it's still an extra piece (along with the stand and pen) that you need to carry around for full functionality. That's really my biggest personal issue with foldables, but, as Leonard points out, most laptop users aren't ready for a life of typing on a digital keyboard.

"It was all about making the new 16-inch [X1 Fold] as thin as possible," said Leonard when asked why the magnetic stand and keyboard now attach to the outside of the device. He also pointed out that even with all accessories included, the X1 Fold is still a lot more portable than most 16-inch devices. Will we get to a point where digital laptop keyboards with haptics are commonplace? It could certainly happen, especially considering how quickly we've adopted touch typing on phones.

Lenovo (unsurprisingly) aims to accommodate all users

Dual displays, e-ink, and cross-platform laptops

ThinkPad is a great place to test foldables, but Lenovo isn't shy about experimenting with other new designs within other brands. At CES 2024 we saw a ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid device that blends a Windows laptop and an Android tablet, as well as a ThinkBook 13s (Gen 4) SPE with secondary e-ink display on the outside of the lid.

The Yoga Book 9i, refreshed for 2024, is a dual-screen laptop featuring two 13.3-inch OLED touch displays with 2.8K resolution. It looks a lot like the mighty Yoga 9i, except the second display is installed where you'd normally find the physical keyboard and touchpad. It's super versatile, and it's aimed at creators and designers.

These devices all play into the shifting landscape of work. More people are working from home or in collaborative spaces, and traditional laptop form factors don't always make sense. On experimenting with dual displays, Leonard remarked:

"On the dual display with the Yoga Book, really just focusing on something completely different. Really wanting a great touch experience and different glass. Things like that. From a creator [standpoint] that's probably the right conversation with them, with [the Yoga Book] being a dual display. Maybe one day we'll see some of this stuff get married together. Sometimes you need to do things differently for different customers and just experiment."

"Things are changing so fast. [...] These devices, I work on them, I play on them, I consume, I create, I do everything. We're trying to experiment, to give you what's going to work for you. Not everybody's the same."

Where Lenovo is headed next

It's clear that Lenovo is set on continuing to experiment with form factors and designs to better accommodate a wide range of users. Work and leisure habits are changing quickly, and practically every company is scrambling to keep up and produce the next big thing.

That's really no surprise and sounds mostly like a PR pitch, but not every brand has the ability to push money toward products that might not make it past even one year on the market. And while there's a growing list of outstanding Lenovo laptops that have been discontinued, it doesn't necessarily mean they're gone forever. At least I hope not. A titanium laptop with a folding screen and slide-out keyboard is on my wish (or maybe dream) list.